


Curiosity Killed the Katz: A Bev Katz Mystery

by Beguile



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Cigarettes, Gen, Sideways Dames, Whiskey - Freeform, hard-boiled detective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2292485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noir AU – Where Bev is a Private Investigator searching Will Graham, and Zeller is not her housekeeper.  <br/>Prompt Fill for the Hannibal ACCA: “Noir AU with mandatory team sassy science.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Curiosity Killed the Katz: A Bev Katz Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of the Dino de Laurentiis Company and its related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only. 
> 
> One thing to bear in mind – while this is a noir, it exists outside of time. I was careful to avoid any indicators of chronology and borrowed heavily from canon for the context. My emphasis was much more on noir aesthetic and tone than history. 
> 
> To the donor: I hope that I have done your prompt justice! Thank you so much for the opportunity!

* * *

 

Curiosity Killed the Katz

-A Bev Katz Mystery-

 

          Freddie Lounds was a dame so sideways she made horizontal look crooked.  She was a fleeting fixture in every circle of society, from swanky joints uptown to the sleaziest dives and back alleys of downtown.  People remembered her in dreamy, disjointed fragments: a camera flash, red hair, striped stockings, garter flash.  When Bev started asking questions about her, Freddie Lounds sounded more like a sexy lamp than a living, breathing woman.  When told as much, Freddie just laughed, “I’d expect nothing more.  The description for you can’t be much different, Detective…?”

          “Bev Katz, PI.”

          “Oh,” Freddie lifted her martini glass.  Her lace glovelets cut a warm contrast with the icy glow from her drink.  “ _Former_ detective.” 

          She was overdressed, as usual.  The Wilton erred more on the side of dive than respectable drinking establishment but that, Bev suspected, was precisely the reason why Freddie chose it.  People came to the Wilton to drown their sorrows with cheap liquor served in fancy glasses, to enjoy one last drink before the end came not only to the bar but the rest of the town.  And all they’d find at the bottom of their glasses was the punchline to the greatest cosmic joke: that the end had already come, but the world just kept on spinning. 

          Freddie didn’t lament the end; apocalypse, particularly personal apocalypse, was a spectator’s sport, and she always sat in the front row.  She dressed for the occasion of her next big story with a striped suit, a fitted blazer and pencil skirt, perfectly coifed red curls, and topped off her ensemble with a stylish hat that she continued to wear as she drank.  There was just no use reporting on a philandering politician if she didn’t look good. 

          “Great job on the Ripper case,” Freddie commented after taking a sip from her martini.  “I mean, of course, your decision to leave the Metropolitan Police Department, not your wrongful arrest of Dr. Frederick Chilton.” 

          Bev glared another hole in the cracked mirror behind the bar.  Freddie Lounds would bring up her leaving the MPD.  She would also be bringing up the murder of Katz’s partner, Miriam Lass, and the reputation Katz courted ever since her move to the private sector.  That was how Freddie fought: with low blows and sharp jabs to the weakest points in an opponents’ armour.  Bev had a lot of weak points, but she also had moves of her own that even Freddie Lounds, intrepid reporter, wouldn’t see coming.

          She ordered a whiskey when the bartender stopped by and bided her time, awaiting its arrival, with a cigarette.  She offered one to Freddie from her silver case, one the reporter accepted and lit herself.  Bev had her own lit just as her whiskey arrived.  They settled into an amicable silence, smoothing into the red and black surroundings with ease. 

          Freddie broke the silence first, “You’re here about the Ripper.”

          Bev let that stew for a second.  She took a long, languid drag on her cigarette.  Patience was a weapon against people like Lounds, people who wanted to cut to the chase.  By the time she spoke, Freddie was chomping at the bit.  Her red lips were pursed in frustration.  “No,” Bev sipped at her whiskey to wet her throat. 

          “What reason could you possibly have to talk to me, then?”   
  
          Bev wasn’t a gambling woman.  She liked sure things, certainties, and in lieu of those, low margins of error.  Freddie Lounds was none of those things.  She was a high stakes gambling dame, one who bet exclusively in terms of all or nothing.  That was not the kind of woman Bev wanted to spill the beans to.

          But what choice did she have, really?  The case was nowhere.  Bev was chasing dead ends and fraying threads.  Her leads were all pointed in opposite directions.  The only woman to turn to was the one who always seemed to see the end coming, even if that meant doing some high stakes gambling of her own. 

          “Abigail Hobbs came to see me yesterday.”

          Freddie smiled knowingly.  Her cheeks blossomed from the scent of a story.  Still, she kept her response cryptic, “Abigail Hobbs is dead.  Murdered two weeks ago in her home in Minnesota.”

          “ _Allegedly_ ,” Bev countered.  “The cops only proved the blood was human.”

          “I’d say that’s pretty compelling evidence, ex-detective, especially since no one’s seen Abigail Hobbs since.”

          “I have.”

          The rouge in her cheeks was growing from more than just the Wilton’s cherry walls.  Freddie Lounds’s interest had been piqued; she just didn’t want to admit that yet.  “Okay,” she tapped her cigarette thoughtfully against the cheap ashtray.  “Let’s say I believe you.  What was Abigail Hobbs doing in your office yesterday?”   
  
          “Hiring me for a job.”

          “What job?”   
  
          “To find Will Graham.”

          Bev had tipped her cards just a little too steeply on that play.  Freddie _knew_ , or at least she thought she did, and no matter what, knowing made her dangerous.  “Abigail Hobbs contracted you to find Will Graham.”  
  
          “That’s right.”   
  
          “One of the suspects in her murder investigation?”   
  
          “One of _your_ suspects in her murder investigation,” Bev corrected her.  “You’re the one who’s been gunning for Will Graham from the start, not law enforcement.”

          Freddie sighed.  “Their loss - and Abigail Hobbs’s, I suppose,” she wiped the lipstick from her martini glass before shooting a pointed glare in Bev’s direction, “Not mine.”

          Bev took another sip of her whiskey.  She waited for Freddie to make the next move.  Impatience had to be wearing her thin.

          Sure enough, Freddie inched closer to Bev on her barstool.  “That’s enough bumping gums, Ms. Katz, wouldn’t you say?  You didn’t come here to sip whiskey and ply me with gaspars all night.”  
          “No.”

          “Then tell me what you know.”

          Bev laughed, “On what?  Good faith that you’ll tell me what you know?” 

          “The re-emergence of Abigail Hobbs would make for a front page story, especially if I got to it before the FBI,” Freddie’s smile was an ever-thinning line, an Ace of Diamonds flashed discretely before slipped back into her hand.  “We’ll exchange information: just two sideways dames helping each other out.”   
  
          Bev extended her hand.  “Shake on it,” she insisted. 

          Freddie wrapped her lacy fingers around Bev’s, drew the former detective’s hand to her lips, and placed a kiss on the bruised knuckles.  Her lipstick left a bloody imprint.  “Consider it shaken,” Freddie claimed, releasing Bev’s hand. 

          Deal made, Bev’s tongue loosened.  The whiskey didn’t hurt.  She told Freddie Lounds the whole sordid affair, from the moment Abigail Hobbs walked into her office all doe-eyed and teary, dressed up like a china doll in a gingham frock coat, claiming her father had gone missing.  She’d left a picture of a bearded man with a thousand-yard stare in a plaid jacket, along with the name Will Graham and some story about him gone hunting the week before.  The story didn’t pan out.  Instead, Bev had stumbled onto some larger conspiracy: not only was Abigail Hobbs supposedly dead, Will Graham was the man who murdered her father, the serial killer known as the Minnesota Shrike.  He’d also gone missing around the same time evidence surfaced of that Abigail had been murdered.  To top it all off, he’d also developed some rather serious paranoia about his psychiatrist, a man named Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

          “But the cops don’t seem to be treating Graham as a suspect,” Bev noted.  “The Feds aren’t even concerned with his whereabouts.  Apparently, he went on administrative leave and has a solid alibi, but they won’t say what.”

          “The FBI has always had a soft spot for Will Graham and his deficiencies,” Freddie sighed and picked at her gloves.  She dropped her next bomb casually, “Have you spoken with Dr. Lecter?”

          “Yes, but he didn’t seem surprised that Will was suspicious of him.”

          “No, he wouldn’t be.”

          “Why do you say that?”   
  
          Freddie might have agreed to share, but it was obvious she was only going to do so if Bev asked for clarification.  “Dr. Lecter has a keen eye for deception, which is a sure sign that he is a deceiver himself.”

          “I picked up on that too,” Bev agreed.  “He’s hiding something.  I don’t think it’s Will Graham.”

          “No, it wouldn’t be.”

          “What makes you say that?”   
  
          “Intuition.  Dr. Lecter is a man driven by his own curiosities.  My guess is…” she hesitated.  Sharing went against her nature.  Freddie had to take another drink before she spoke again.  “My guess is that he’s waiting to see how all these pieces play out.  Whether he’s involved or not.”

          “What’s his relationship with Abigail?”

          Freddie’s eyes gleamed, practically sing-songing, “I know something you don’t know.”  She smoked, she drank, she took her damn time with an answer, playing with Bev’s patience the same way she’d been played at the start of the conversation.  “Dr. Lecter is another of Abigail Hobbs’s guardians.  He was with Will Graham at the Hobbs house the day Will shot the Minnesota Shrike.”

          “Is it possible that he’s hiding Abigail?”

          “I’d say it’s highly probable,” Freddie polished off the rest of her drink.  “Former detective Beverly Katz: K-A-T-Z.  I spell that right?”

          “You did.”

          “Good luck with your case, detective,” she stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and grabbed her handbag off the bar.  “Certainly better luck than you had not-catching the Ripper.”

          Bev nodded in response.  She looked to the mirror again.  The cracks left her face folded into a blank slate, an empty void.  Finally, Bev looked how she felt.

 

* * *

 

          It hadn’t always been barstools, dives, and cryptic exchanges for Bev Katz.  Once upon a time, she’d been a detective, a celebrated one by detective standards too.  She was one half of a dynamic duo, the other being an icy blond detective by the name of Miriam Lass.  Together, they’d put more criminals behind bars or wrapped them around more bullets than whole precincts.  At least, that was the way the stories went, and there were stories.  There were legends, in fact, the biggest one being the day that Miriam Lass disappeared.  Second biggest?  The day her arm got mailed back to the precinct, courtesy of the Chesapeake Ripper.  This was only slightly after the third biggest story, the one that haunted Bev even as she wandered back to the office from the Wilton: the day she put Dr. Frederick Chilton in cuffs for being the Ripper, only to be proven wrong by Miriam Lass’s accusing finger a few days later.

          She quit that very minute.  Stormed into her captain’s office, whipped her badge and gun onto the desk, and then stormed out.  She had cleared out the whole underworld, but she couldn’t catch one killer, the only killer that mattered, and for that, Bev would never be a cop.  Not until the Ripper was brought to justice.

          The private sector wasn’t all bad.  Bev got to unleash some of her aggressions.  There was no captain to report to, nobody following-up about excessive force, so Bev got her hands dirty.  She cleaned clocks, rearranged mugs, kissed a lot of guys black and blue with her fists.  At first, she felt better about Miriam.  She started letting go.  But then, every punch made her hold onto her anger a little bit harder, until two-bit reporters could get under her skin just by making a reference to her disgrace. 

          Katz Investigations was the corner office on the third floor of a building made of sickly, geriatric brinks, all wrinkled and pock-marked from the elements.  The windows were rheumy with dirty slush.  Bev climbed the stairs to the front door.  The hinges squeaked a feeble greeting, like a lonely soul at the old folk’s home who never got any visitor’s.  One more person just waiting for the end.

          The lights were turned low in the office.  Brian Zeller was reclined in the chair behind his desk as she entered, second glass of whiskey in his hand if the glazed look in his eyes was at all accurate.  Zeller came with her when she left the MPD; he dropped off his badge just after her in a show of solidarity and ended up as an associate.  Not an investigator: Zeller knew where his talents lay.  Mostly, he handled paperwork, made phone calls, drank whiskey, insisted he wasn’t a housekeeper, and being a housekeeper. 

          Jimmy Price was there too.  Not another ruined MPD cop, Price still worked as a medical examiner and consulted with them privately.  That mostly consisted of drinking with them late at night when cases were giving Bev the runaround.

          Kind of like tonight.

          “What’d you find out?” Zeller asked, filling a glass for her without being asked.

          Bev turned it down.  She needed her wits more than a tongue loosening.  The glass she drank with Lounds was already making her stomach curl.  “That Dr. Lecter might be at the centre of all this.”

          “Might be,” Zeller chided. 

          “I don’t like it any more than you do, Brian,” she noted.  Her meeting with Freddie Lounds had clarified only the most difficult option for her investigation.  Dr. Hannibal Lecter was a celebrated psychiatrist, an affluent member of Baltimore’s high society who moonlit, evidently, as a confidante for damaged FBI profilers.  Bev didn’t trust yuppies to begin with, but she really didn’t trust Dr. Lecter.  Their first meeting earlier in the day had been uncomfortable, raw; she walked into his office and he cut her down to size with a look.  If Freddie Lounds was onto him, Dr. Lecter had to have dirtied his hands at some point. 

          “Let’s start from the top,” Jimmy prompted.  “A dead girl contracted you to find her missing father.”

          “Who had killed her biological father,” Zeller added.

          Jimmy picked up again with, “And had a beef with his psychiatrist, Dr. Lecter.”

          “Who was also one of the dead girl’s guardians,” Zeller tossed back his whiskey.  “When you said you were going to the private sector, Bev, I didn’t realize how hard-boiled things were gonna get.”

          “I’d say this is more of a soft-boil,” Jimmy noted.  “All things considered.  What’s really changed since your conversation with Freddie Lounds?  You still don’t know where Will Graham is, and you have no evidence to suggest that Dr. Lecter is involved except his ramblings and the testimony of one shady reporter.”

          “She is shady,” Zeller stared thoughtfully at the bottom of his tumbler.  Shady to the core.”    

          Bev and Jimmy ignored him.  Zeller’s stance on Freddie Lounds had always resided somewhere between regret and disgust, and he drifted closer to the former with every finger of whiskey.  “Will Graham claimed he was going to Minnesota when Lecter heard from him last.  That was the same day that Abigail Hobbs went missing,” Bev paced the short distance in the office to clear her thoughts.  “But the cops aren’t looking for him.  The FBI isn’t even treating him as a suspect.  He has an alibi apparently.”

          “So either the FBI is covering up Abigail’s murder,” Jimmy offered just in time for Zeller to complete his thought, “or Abigail’s murder was staged to make it look like Will Graham did it…by someone who didn’t know the FBI was backing him.”   
  
          As if in response, a loud knock sounded from the office door.  The frosted glass adjacent to it rattled in the frame.  A dark shadow passed in front of the window even with the lamp beaming toward it.  Bev and Jimmy looked to Zeller immediately.  He shot a glance between them.  “I’m not your-” he stopped before he could say housekeeper so that he could keep house, “Katz Investigations!  We’re closed!”   
  
          “This is Special Agent Jack Crawford of the FBI,” thundered the shadow.

          “Well, well, well,” Jimmy’s turn to finish his drink, “speak and the devil shall appear.”

         

* * *

 

          Jack Crawford was an imposing presence.  His shadow filled the whole wall of the room.  He carried the whole of the bureau with him, woven into every stitch of his wool suit, his hat, and tie.  Jimmy and Zeller straightened slightly in response to his authority.  Bev resisted.  She didn’t need to impress men like Jack Crawford anymore, not without the badge hanging around her neck.  Not when they came traipsing onto her turf at night. 

          “What can we do for you, Agent?” Jimmy asked.

          Bev didn’t give Jack the pleasure, “We don’t know where Will Graham is.”   
  
          Jack had tangoed enough times before not to play coy.  He tried to take the lead, “You know enough to talk to his psychiatrist.  Dr. Lecter contacted me that a private investigator had been tasked with finding Will Graham.  Who hired you?”   
          “A concerned party.”

          He took another step forward.  His shadow bloomed behind him like a wraith.  “Who hired you to find Will Graham?” 

          “We’re going to be dancing all night if you keep stepping like this, Agent Crawford.  Unless you’ve got a better offer than the one our client made, I’m not saying a word.”

          They were, indeed, at an impasse.  Crawford knew it.  Thankfully, he still had some moves left in his repertoire.  “Will Graham didn’t kill Abigail Hobbs,” he offered. “But Abigail Hobbs has gone missing.  And her blood was found in her family kitchen in Minnesota.”  
  
          Jimmy was appalled at the breach of confidentiality.  “Why are you telling us this?”   
          “I’m hoping that it will encourage you to talk to me about what you found today,” Crawford said openly.  “Tell me who hired you,” it was the last time he was going to ask.

          Bev gambled.  Her second time tonight at the high stakes table after breaking even with Freddie Lounds (at least for the time being). “A girl who looked like and claimed to be Abigail Hobbs.”

          The office went still.  Bev watched Crawford’s shadow inch down to a more manageable size.  He was gambling too.  “Will Graham is conducting an investigation,” he agreed.  “Part of his investigation involves the disappearance of Abigail Hobbs.”

          “Wait, wait,” Zeller stopped him.  “He’s investigating her, and she’s investigating him?”  
  
          “Will Graham was pursuing a suspect when he went on leave.  He believes that same suspect is responsible for Abigail’s disappearance.  He also believes that her disappearance was retaliation against him.”   
  
          “Who’s the suspect?” Bev asked.     
  
          “I can’t tell you that,” Crawford replied, “which is why I’m here telling you to stay away from this.”

          She shrugged, “My fee’s been paid.”  
  
          “Is that all that matters to you, detective?  A fee?”

          “I’m not a detective.  Hell, even when I had a badge, I wasn’t a detective.”

          “I know a lot of people who would beg to differ,” Jack stared into her, straight through her tough veneer.  Bev had tried so hard to separate from her past life.  She traded her leather coat for wool, her red lips for chapped skin, her badge for bruised knuckles.  She asserted herself as the antithesis to Detective Katz, just another private dick with nothing but bad memories to drown with fists of whiskey and packs of cigarettes.  She felt Jack Crawford sifting through her meanness, her rage, and finding the old Bev.  The one who promised to serve and protect.  The one who loved her city, loved her partner, loved her friends.  Youthful, idealistic, loyal. 

          “I know a lot of people who owe their lives to you, detective.  A lot of people who saw you as a captain one day, as commissioner.  You were a good cop, you still are, no matter what the Ripper might want you to think otherwise.  And I know that you still want to do good.  You still want to make right.”

          Damn, he was good.  They needed to outsource him for motivational speeches around the country.  Bev felt like she’d been thirsting for everything he just said since she left the force.  Jack was a master at filling needs, and when there were no needs to fill, he created them.  He cleared a space in Bev and gave her sweet things with which to fill it.

          Bad news for Jack Crawford though: Bev learned to live with a whole lot of empty spaces since Miriam died.

          “The Ripper didn’t make me think I was a bad cop,” Bev pointed out.  “He made me realize that there is no real right, no real good.  There’s the cases you close and the ones you don’t.  The fee matters because, after the shots have been fired and the paperwork’s filed, it’s all you’ve got left.  Until the money’s gone too.”   
  
          Jack appeared to nod.  Much as he didn’t want to agree with her or encourage her, Bev had tapped into his own frustrations about law enforcement.  And he didn’t even get a fee at the end of all the cases he closed.  “You leave this alone, even just for tonight, detective, you’ll have more than a fee to show for it: I swear.”   
  
          “For some reason, I doubt that,” Zeller chided.

          “You have my word,” Jack only had eyes for her.  He was trying to tell her something.  Bev didn’t know what.  She parsed through their previous conversation, searching for meaning.  Jack Crawford’s speech was a crime scene, but his crime wasn’t just about inspiring her to idealism.

          Bev tried to keep the revelation from showing in her face.  She couldn’t resist though.  She always said it: always.  “Got’cha,” she muttered, then, audibly, “My office runs on money first and truth second.” Her next words were a triple dog dare: “Make it worth my while.”

          Jack was stung.  Paying Bev made her right; truth gave her power.  Either way, she got out ahead.  For once in her life, sitting at the high stakes table finally paid off.  Jack did the only thing he could do, “The FBI is all over this, Detective Katz.  I only need to deal in warnings: keep away from Will Graham and any investigation you think pertains to him.”

          He tipped his hat.  “Evening, gentleman.  Detective.”

          The office descended back into hallowed silence.  Jimmy, Zeller, and Bev cast short shadows.  Hers got smaller as she shrank under the weight of Jack’s silent confession.

          “Bev?” Zeller asked.

          She straightened.  Her shadow was an arrow on the wall, angular and jagged like Miriam Lass’s disembodied arm.  “We need to find Will Graham,” she decided, turning back to her desk as she did.  “Grab your heaters, boys.  You’re coming too.”

          Jimmy tried to talk over the sound of Zeller’s derisive snort.  “We just went over how we don’t know where Will Graham is.”

          Bev kept her revolver buried in the back of her desk drawer along with a box of bullets and a picture of Miriam.  She grabbed everything, the picture especially, and filled her pockets.  “Will Graham is at Hannibal Lecter’s house.”

          “How do you know that?” Zeller demanded. 

          “Because,” Bev punctuated every word with another bullet in the magazine, “Hannibal Lecter is the Ripper.”

          She spun the chamber before slamming it into place. 

          Jimmy was struggling to keep up with the conversation.  “How did you come by that conclusion?”

          “Jack Crawford,” Bev replied.  She looked at her associate and consultant, both still swirling tumblers in their hands.  “You both coming?  We’ve got a Ripper to catch and a case to solve.”

 

* * *

 

          Bev Katz had hands around her neck before.  She had never not been able to fight her way out of those situations though.

          The flight from D.C. to Baltimore, the covert stalking through Lecter’s upscale neighbourhood, the breaking and entering, the discovery of his secret basement: the whole night was a steady blur of impossible scenarios come true.  She had explained to Price and Zeller on the drive-in her conclusions about Jack’s silent confession; the agent had to know that all she cared about was the Ripper, all her cases were just efforts to finally take him out.  She and Zeller got separated on their routes into the house, which was just as well: searching for him made Bev careless, carelessness had made her clumsy, and clumsiness led her into the hidden basement in Dr. Lecter’s house.

          Outwardly, the house projected the same innocent transparency as the doctor himself.  The cream coloured stone, the elegant plasterwork, the rich detailing all projected innocence to the neighbourhood.  His was a candy house in the forest: inviting to look at, horrific on the inside.  Kind of like the doctor himself, whose disguise was just as opaque and thickly applied as it was to his house.  And Bev had to admit, only a disguise miles thick could cover up the skeletons hidden in Dr. Lecter’s basement.

          She didn’t find Will Graham.  The house appeared empty.  What she did find was a sterile, concrete chamber divided by plastic curtains and insulated drywall.  He had an area dedicated to torture, another to dissection, another to construction, and finally, two locked doors that Bev tried and failed to open.  She finally found the key for one, but no sooner had she opened the door than the lights went out and the hand found its way around her neck.

          Her gun got lost in the struggle and ended up in the blackness. 

          Oxygen deprivation slowed time to the point where Bev could appreciate all the little things in the final moments of her life.  She could appreciate, for instance, how quickly Dr. Lecter was dispatching her, how painless it would be.  Masochistically, she wondered if Miriam was given the same benefit.  Did Dr. Lecter strangle her, or did he just start cutting?  
  
          Bev elbowed him.  She jabbed her heels into his feet.  He yanked her back into the dark, crushing her windpipe as he did.  Most people would say something.  The guys in Bev’s line of work always said something.  “Guess you could say I took your breath away, huh, darling?” They just had to get one bad pun in before the bell. 

          Lecter wasn’t like that.  He was savouring Bev’s death.

          She was all but unconscious when the impact came.  There was a wet, cracking sound, one that caused Lecter to lurch forward and lose his grip.  Bev dropped from his grasp and tore off into the blackness.  She could just barely hear the sounds of a fight outside of her hacking coughs.  Lecter was being attacked. 

          The basement was one giant abyss in the darkness.  Bev fumbled through, arms flailing, trying to find the light switch or the stairs or a better vantage point.  The fight was winding down behind her, and if Lecter was the winner, he would be coming after her first. 

          Her foot hit the stairs.  As if on cue, the trapdoor opened above her.  “Bev?” Zeller called. 

          “I’m here!” she replied.  The moonlight reached where she was nearly sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, illuminating the light switch of all things.  Bev threw it just as flashlight beams cut through the abyss of the dining room and shouts of, “FBI!” emerged from every direction.

          Zeller’s hands flew up into the air, accidentally letting the trap door close over Bev.  She whipped around, still blind, to the sounds of shots being fired.  Her body flinched in anticipation of pain, but the bullets weren’t for her.  They were for Lecter, who lay on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

          A white clad figure with long, dirty blonde hair lowered her arm, revealing Bev’s revolver clutched in her knobby fingers.  Bev waited for her other arm to fall, but it never came.  There was no arm attached to the stump of bicep hanging limply by her torso.

          Bev’s heart dropped into her feet.  “Miriam,” she breathed.  “Miriam?”

          The trap door sprang open above her.  Bev was deaf to it.  She shouted at the officers to stand the hell back as she made her way through the basement towards the shell-shocked figure.  Part of her knew she was being irrational.  The Ripper didn’t keep victims alive unless he was going to kill them shortly thereafter. 

          But no sooner had Bev placed her hands on the woman’s quivering shoulders than she knew – she _knew_ – this was Miriam Lass.  This was still Miriam Lass. 

          The gun clattered to the floor.  Footsteps thundered on the stairs behind them.  “You saved my life,” Bev told her. 

          Miriam’s voice shook as much as the rest of her, “You saved mine.” 

           

* * *

 

          The Feds found Will Graham slumped against the bookshelves in the drawing room.  His bowels were scattered nearby.  Bev worried that Lecter had disemboweled him when she and Zeller broke and entered, but the paramedics kindly reassured her that Will had been cut before she’d arrived.  His plot to take down Lecter turned out to be an elaborate game of mental chess, one that ended with both Kings lying bleeding on the field of battle and two Queens reeling in the aftermath.

          Bev didn’t let go of Miriam.  She kept her arm over her frail partner’s shoulders.  She held onto Miriam’s remaining hand.  They rode together in the ambulance, saying little to one another, mostly just drawing mental comparisons between their present incarnations and the versions from their past.  “You’ve got a lot of bruises on your knuckles,” Miriam remarked.

          Bev laughed – actually laughed.  For real.  “You should see the rest of me,” she stared at the tissue paper flesh on the back of Miriam’s hand, “I’ve got bruises in places I didn’t know I had.”   
  
          Miriam squeezed Bev’s hand in hers.  “I’m glad it was you,” she said tearfully.  “I knew it was going to be you.”   
  
          “I missed him once before,” Bev said.  “I really thought we had him with that Chilton guy.” 

          “Fool Bev Katz once, shame on you.  Fool Bev Katz twice…”

          “Get pumped full of metal by Miriam Lass.”

          There was so little of her left.  Lecter had clearly fed her, clothed her, and cared for her, but Miriam had died day after day in that place.  Nevertheless, Bev’s words brought back a spark in her eyes.  “They’re never going to let me back on the force,” she lamented.  “Not that I think I want to be.  Not after…after everything.”

          “You ever thought about making the move to the private sector?  I could use a partner.”

          “I thought that guy at the scene was your partner.”

          “No,” Bev chuckled, gripping her partner’s hand.  “No, Brian’s my housekeeper.”

 

* * *

 

-Six Months Later-

          Freddie Lounds couldn’t believe her luck when Bev Katz sidled into the seat next to hers at the Wilton.  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t hero Private Investigator Beverly Katz,” she purred.  “To what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”   
  
          “You owe it to your column printing a rare positive article for once,” Bev noted.  She signalled for the bartender to bring her a whiskey and whipped out her cigarettes.  Again, Freddie accepted, even going so far as to let Bev light it for her.  “How bad did it hurt – having to write nice things?”   
  
          Freddie unleashed a plume of smoke as wild as her hair.  “It can’t all be death, destruction, and mayhem all the time, Ms. Katz.  Every now and then we reporters get saddled with good tidings.  I admit that I compensated for it later, what with the descriptions of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter in the hospital.  The FBI apparently found those photographs lurid and indecent.”

          “I can’t say I wasn’t happy to see you sued for slander one more time.”

          Bev owed her that one.  Even Freddie thought so: she let it slide.  “Really, everything turned out rather neatly?  You were vindicated for your grievous error on the police force, your former partner turns up alive – sans arm, the Ripper is captured; Abigail Hobbs is found alive and well in his guest room…” she stopped playing nice and had to ask a question.  “Did Miss Hobbs ever explain why she came to your office looking for Will Graham?”

          Bev played with her cigarette over the ashtray.  Should she or shouldn’t she?  Keeping information from Freddie Lounds was the most fun a girl could have in a city as broken as D.C.  Then again, if Lounds could play nice, so could she.  Just this once.  “She was a scared little girl, Lounds, caught between a cop and a killer.  Hannibal Lecter faked her death to smoke Will out, and when that didn’t work, he had her hire me to rattle some cages.  After having the Minnesota Shrike for a father, I’m not surprised that she did everything he told her to do.”  
  
          “Just as I suspected,” Lounds sighed with regret.  “Of course, I wasn’t allowed to print everything after the FBI issued the gag order.  Serves me right for stepping on Jack Crawford’s toes.”

          “You don’t believe that.”  
  
          “No.  People come around here talking about how everything happens for a reason, how people get what they deserve, but the truth is – and I think you’ll agree with me, Ms. Katz – that justice is what you make of it.  I took pictures of Will Graham in the hospital while he was recovering and published them.  Jack Crawford prevents me from printing further information about the case.  That doesn’t unprint the pictures or keep people from seeing them.”

          “Your ill turn did not deserve Jack’s?”

          Freddie’s eyes gleamed, “I didn’t say that.  I only mean that Jack’s sense of justice hardly serves Will Graham’s.  Or mine.”

          They enjoyed another pull of their drinks and cigarettes before Freddie spoke again.  “Why are you here, Ms. Katz?  You’re not the gloating type.  Surely you’re not looking for a congratulations on catching the Chesapeake Ripper…or a consult, for that matter.”

          Bev smiled.  “What do you know about the Tooth Fairy?”

          “More than you.”

          “Care to share?”   
  
          “Not tonight.”

          A dull thud on the bar top nearly had Freddie leaping off her stool.  She snapped to her left where another woman had taken a seat at the bar: an icy blonde with a stiff left arm.  Her right hand was bruised at the knuckles. 

          “Freddie, this is my partner, Miriam Lass.”

          Miriam smiled, “Hello, Miss Lounds.  How would you like an exclusive?”

          Freddie beamed: first to Miriam, then to Bev, then at her drink.

          “Just a few sideways dames helping each other out,” Bev noted.  “What do you say, Lounds?  Is this the start of a beautiful friendship?”

          “Not on your life,” Freddie’s smile was a sharp dagger.

          Bev caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.  Lipstick on, fedora tilted, with her partner in arm’s reach: it was the good old days in the bad old world, and she was staring down a brave new world.

 

* * *

 

          Zeller and Jimmy were pouring over files and through whiskey when Bev and Miriam returned to the office. 

          “What’d you find out?” Zeller asked. 

          Bev filled two glasses for her and Miriam.  “We’ve got a dragon to catch,” she said with a grin.   

 

* * *

 

Happy reading!


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